Buryu Yokai
by Falcon's Hyperdrive
Summary: She comes from another world, where her new Saiyan blood is a piece of fiction, and hides away on Earth to come to terms with this. This isolation ends when she's asked to help against the androids to come in one year. Her secrets are closely guarded, but how far will she go to keep Vegeta from finding her out? Or will she learn that the control she seeks isn't always so necessary?
1. Chapter 1: World on Fire

Rating this T, though contains violence, bits of language due to how the characters speak, and references I'm not entirely sure about. There will never be anything even bordering on sexually explicit, though, ever. Let me know if you think the rating needs changed.

This fan fiction will combine elements from both the manga and the anime. It is AU from the start, and especially diverges from the canon around the time Goku returns to Earth after Namek. How it changes, you'll find out eventually. One way, as you already know, is that Bulma and Vegeta do not get together and have Trunks. I am a big Bulma/Vegeta fan, but I thought I'd do this differently. And all non-canon characters are my own invention.

I'll do what I can to keep Vegeta from getting too OOC. This is Vegeta/OC, but it's going to take a while to get there, I'll go ahead and warn you. I'm working on chapter fourteen as of this moment, and it still isn't there. :-P Please let me know what you think, and I hope this is as enjoyable to read as it is to write.

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_**Buryu Yokai**_

By Falcon's Hyperdrive

A.k.a., Fuzzy Slipper

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_Part One:_

_The Woman From Another World_

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**Chapter One: World On Fire**

When she awoke, the land was burning. Lavender grass blazed green and turquoise under the scorching blue sun of a late afternoon, filling the superheated air with acrid yellow smoke that burned her lungs and sent her back to the ground before she could push herself up properly. She fell into wracking coughs, curling up in the pain of the fit as a sleek black tail, matching the thick mane of her hair, spasmed once then lay limp on the ground.

As the coughing faded away, light brown eyes released a hard tension in the eyelids and brow and hung open, glazed and unseeing. Pink lips, marred by a dried scab of blood where some impact had split the skin, stayed parted to pull in air choked with the poisonous fumes. Her hands, laced with bloodied hairline scratches and mottled bruises, twitched once before she stilled, opening from tightly balled fists where her fingernails, cut short, left crescent indents in the pale ivory flesh of her palms, one of which was crossed by an angry red cut where whatever she had been working on had slipped and bit into the epidermis with a jagged edge. Her arms could not be seen beneath the bloodstained grey fabric of her hooded sweatshirt, but her wrists―or what was visible of them―bore the same scratches and bruises as the hands connected to them, and were thin and bony. The sweatshirt hung loosely about her frame, as did the thick khaki pants which were three sizes too big, held in place by a sturdy black belt strung through the belt loops of the trousers. Her feet were bare, and the soles were caked with dried mud that did not match the surrounding soil, dribbling beige debris onto blackened red dust. Any blisters or calluses were concealed beneath the layer of filth, which coated the entirety of her feet and the cuffs of her pants which covered her heels and arches with their extra length. Her face, almost skeletal and sporting spectacular fading bruises on her split lip and around her left eye, fell lax as numbness set in, and her eyelids slowly lowered over the glassy orbs they were made to protect.

Consciousness was leaving her, though she wasn't sure if she even held it in her grasp at all when she saw the alien landscape. She watched, hardly registering the movements, as the blazing field around her and the abandoned village of mud huts and now ashen roofs spread their hungry fire in an ever-expanding circle. The hot wind, fed by the inferno and its currents, kicked a stand of burning embers into the air, leaving them to tumble, still glowing red-hot, down past the cracked and crumbling walls to land on the prone black appendage resting behind the battered and exhausted figure. A moment passed, then two, and the searing agony finally blasted past the encroaching darkness of her mind to her pain center and set it to blaze as hotly as the field around her. Arching her back with the onrush of energy, the woman let out a strangled but piercing scream, then surrendered to oblivion.

**. . . **. . . **. . .**

Three men were flying over a purple landscape with the attitude of bitter satisfaction. They moved without the aid of an air car or jet cycle, two giants trailing after a shorter form whose hair seemed to be making an attempt to make up for his lack of stature. It bent backward under the force of the figure's velocity, dark brown locks appearing almost black in the light. A matching band of fur wrapped around the waist of his white battle armor, under which he wore a bright blue suit of expandable fabric. His hands were clad in white gloves, his feet in white boots tipped in gold, and the shoulder guards of his armor stood as proud gold sentinels on either side of his head. His towering companions lacked the blue bodysuit, instead clad in black shorts beneath armor which served as dark shadows of their leader's. Where gold had been, tan replaced it; where white had reigned, dark blue took its place. White trimmed the sections of armor, with brown leather or rope coiled around the wrists of gauntlets and around the ankles of their boots. On the left figure, a black carpet of hair reached past his knees, an impressive feat especially when taking into account just how tall the man was. Matching him for height, his companion was completely bald but, while the other was clean shaven, sported a thin goatee complete with mustache. Both had broad chests which rivaled barrels, and thick arms and legs were almost like tree trunks attached to their torsos, built of muscle and impossible to attain for even the largest human bodybuilder. They, too, wrapped a belt of fur around their waists, and to an oblivious observer that might have been all they were, but a twitch of muscle betrayed to drifting plumes of smoke that the belts on the three were, in fact, thick tails tucked up and out of the way.

The foremost figure, though shorter than the two following, lost nothing in the way of bearing, his higher status screaming through his dress, his stance, and the way he regarded the two behind him. He was authority, and though he seemed a shrunken version of his towering subjects, the Prince of the Saiyans held an aura of power about him that almost crackled in the heated air, still loose and barely restrained after what couldn't even be considered a battle.

Carpet-hair let out a sharp laugh. "Pathetic creatures didn't even put up a fight. What a waste of time."

"Shut it, Raditz." Baldy scowled at the lower-class soldier, his already sour disposition worsened by the pitiful resistance and the denial of a challenge. "Your complaining is grating on my nerves."

"Oh, sorry, Nappa. I didn't realize you had switched personalities with Zarbon." Raditz's voice gushed sarcasm, and earned him the dirtiest look the older warrior could muster. Their short tempers, however, had nothing on their prince's.

The youngest of them didn't even turn when he snapped at his men. "Silence, both of you." Vegeta gazed straight ahead, sights fixed on the horizon where they had landed their pods. Regardless of how little he liked it on Frieza's ship, he had no desire to remain on the newly purged rock. The fires were beginning to spread from the villages, the grass extremely flammable and undesired by the planet's buyers. The flames would be allowed to continue unabated, and would either consume the thick, plum forests that stretched across the higher altitudes or the moisture in those regions would overpower the searing blaze. The smoke, thick and yellow, was starting to irritate his nostrils, and Vegeta saw no reason to stick around and bathe in the noxious fumes. He prepared himself to announce this, venting his own frustration with the situation, when the beeping of his scouter caught his attention, coupled with a faint scream at the edge of his range.

The three stopped and hovered in midair, each putting a finger to their scouters. "That was in the direction of the first village," Nappa announced. "I thought we wiped that one out completely."

"So did I," Vegeta agreed, frowning. "Perhaps we missed one, somehow. Whatever it is doesn't have much of a power level. Ten at most."

Raditz tapped his own scouter, green to Nappa's blue and Vegeta's red. "I thought it said a hundred, there, for a second."

"Your scouter must need repairing," Nappa said with a sneer. "Should we check it out, Vegeta?"

"We have to." Vegeta shot off toward the source of the mysterious power level, knowing that it had not been there a few minutes ago. "Come on, you two, I want to be off this planet before the smoke stains my armor."

**. . . **. . . **. . . **

They found her curled up around an object tucked well out of sight in the shelter of her body. She looked…_wrong_ somehow, and Vegeta decided it was the strange clothes and the mud too yellow for this world. He had flown everywhere on the planet, dealing death to the inhabitants, and nowhere had he seen this color of dirt. Then, too, there was the conspicuous lack of any other vessels, not even a crashed ship. It was possible someone might have come and gone, but surely their scouters would have picked up on that.

Raditz knelt beside the prone form. "Where did she come from?" he wondered aloud, voicing the question that rattled in Vegeta's mind. "She looks like she's been a prisoner of some sort."

"Is she dead?" he asked, frowning at the inconclusive results his scanner was giving him. Raditz checked her pulse at her neck and shook his head, brow furrowed.

"She's alive, but probably won't be for long if she's not given medical care. What-" He broke off, shoulders going rigid, and stared in plain shock at the female scrunched up on the ground.

"What is it?" Nappa demanded.

"She's—" He took her shoulder and pulled gently, turning her onto her back. She flopped limply, all muscle control gone, but in that action she released what she had been holding. A tail, black as obsidian, curled through her legs, so still it might have been a stuffed sock. Vegeta knelt in awe beside her and reached out to touch it, gloved fingers grazing the warm limb. When she suddenly gasped and arched her back in reaction to the touch, he jerked his hand back as if burned.

"Holy shit, it's real." Nappa took a step back in his surprise, and Vegeta well understood the sentiment. He felt lost suddenly, unsure what to do. She was a Saiyan, a Saiyan _female_, and she was alive. How was she alive?

"Vegeta, the smoke is in her lungs. And if Frieza finds out about her, she'll be killed on the spot. What are we going to do?"

Killed? No, she couldn't be killed, not the only remaining Saiyan female left alive in the universe. The thought made him nauseous, and spurred him into action. He leaned forward, then tucked one arm under the woman's knees and the other under her upper back, and lifted. His subordinates followed silently as he took off for the pods, and he used the quiet moment to evaluate the creature in his arms. She was small, her eyes coming to the level of his nose if she were standing, he figured, and he felt a flash of male pride in being taller than her. But she was frail, unhealthily scrawny, and her skin cracked and leaked drops of blood in the dry heat. The first aid kit might be able to keep her from dying, though, and he knew he should try to get some nutrients into her before the hibernation cycle kicked in on the space pods.

They all touched down next to the pods and Nappa immediately fetched the kit and an oxygen tank. As Nappa prepared an injection of nutrients and a hydration drip, Vegeta took the mask attached to the tank and gingerly fitted it over her face. He didn't think she was severely injured anywhere other than her hand, as he couldn't spot any fresh blood spotting her clothes, and observed the way the cloth covering her torso concealed her form. It looked baggy enough to hide her tail, and with great care he maneuvered it to wrap around her waist with as little touching as possible. She didn't react this time, and then Vegeta spotted the small burn and grimaced at the thought that he might have touched that and caused her more pain earlier. Raditz also spotted the wound, and passed some burn cream and antiseptic out of the box to his prince.

Once the wounds were taken care of, Vegeta tucked the thick fabric down over the tail and into her trousers, trusting the belt to hold the garment in place without the tail escaping. His own tail ached at the thought of cutting hers off to hide its existence, and immediately he banished the consideration from his mind and busied himself with the drip that Nappa handed him.

All matters finally taken care of, Vegeta was satisfied that the female would live to reach Frieza's ship where they might provide better care. "There is more room in my pod, so she will ride with me back to base. When we return, we will claim a ship crashed as we were laying waste to the planet, and that we found her as the only survivor. I am going to ask for her as our slave, and pray that Frieza is generous."

His fellow Saiyans nodded their assent. He knew he wouldn't have to warn them not to touch her, for as prince it was only right that he take her as consort, should she permit it. He wasn't entirely sure what he would do if she did reject him, but decided to think on that later. The survival of the Saiyan race was not even plausible if she didn't even live through being brought before Frieza. All he could do, then, was hope and pray that this worked.

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_**Uploaded 3/29/14**_


	2. Chapter 2: Cold World

Thank you to those who have read, favorited, and put this on their alerts list, and thank you, **Wilhelm Wigworthy**, for your comments. I hope the emotional and character development works out well, and that you all enjoy it as it happens.

I'm taking some old trends in fan fiction, here, and hopefully my twist is original enough or new enough. Feel free to let me know if you think Vegeta is getting too OOC. I tried to work him back toward how he is in the manga/anime by the time it reaches that point in time, but that'll be a few chapters yet.

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**Chapter Two: Cold World**

She felt numb, limp, like a Raggedy Ann doll thrown over the shoulder. Her last encounter with her captors taught her that it was best to retain that sensation, lest they add to her many bruises and possible other injuries. Besides, waking fully meant feeling the despair again, the depressing hopelessness that was now her life.

Events were blurred inside her mind, her latest escape attempt the last thing she even vaguely recalled. She had… She had gotten the door open, slicing her palm on the dissected control panel when escaping a shower of sparks, and perhaps she had managed to make it outside without being noticed. Her feet felt crusty, so maybe she had gone through mud to get away, but it seemed she had collapsed along the way and had been recaptured. Cold metal restrained her hands, and her body did little to warm the steel that made up the floor beneath her. Voices buzzed overhead, so they were probably waiting for her to wake up before the torment began, and so she did her best to remain unresponsive even as she scratched her way to awareness.

Wait, steel floor? Her prison had concrete. Where had they taken her now?

The first voice was speaking again. "Good work, Vegeta, you have done well. For a monkey." That voice was high and scratchy and sneering, and she knew she had heard it somewhere before. But Vegeta was the name of a manga character… Why were her captors watching Dragon Ball Z?

"Thank you, Frieza." And that was Vegeta's voice, straining to retain some facade of respect. She didn't remember this scene, but it had been a while since she watched the anime. She had only ever gotten up to the middle of the Namek Arc, too, but this had to be before he and Nappa went to Earth, or a flashback.

"Now, explain the presence of this…female."

"A ship crashed as we were finishing with the clean up. This woman was the only survivor. Her survival is uncertain, but if she does live I request her as part of the payment to my men and I, as a slave to serve our…needs."

Okay, that was definitely not something she remembered. Her eyes felt glued shut, and her lids fluttered as she struggled to open them. This situation felt extremely wrong, wronger than wrong even. If she could see, then maybe she could begin to make sense of it.

"An interesting request, Vegeta. And why should I grant you this?"

"My men have worked hard, but they have needs that I'm sure you wouldn't want us contaminating your slaves with. She'd be given regular contraceptives, of course, until we dispose of her when she bores us. A half breed brat is no proper spawn at all, anyway."

Her skin crawled, not liking in any way the manner in which they spoke of this girl they referred to. But why was this even in a kid's cartoon? Sure, it had its perverted moments, like with Oolong and Roshi and then Goku's early methods of identifying girls and boys, but talks of…rape, and sexual slavery? This was gross, and they never would have added this to the show.

Finally, she blinked her eyes open and found her gaze met with grey steel and…clawed, pink feet? A twitch of the eyeballs to the left, and her heart stopped beating when she found herself looking straight into the black pupils of a white, pink, and purple alien being whose nasty grin spoke of pure evil.

"Well, well, it seems the little toy is awake. Welcome, puny slave, to my ship. It seems yours had an unfortunate accident. Your new life, if you even live through this day, is at my whim. Do you understand this, or do you need smaller words?"

When she could only stare, no breath in her lungs, he laughed high and long, joined in cackling by his military court. "A proper measure of fear in this one! Very well, Vegeta, take her. She bears too much a resemblance to you monkeys anyhow, so I think my men would puke on her if they tried to use her. She looks so fragile anyway, I think you'd kill her yourself your first go."

Bile was creeping up in her throat, but she held it down in terror of the violent overlord's reaction to her dirtying his floor. Firm hands touched her shoulders, and she only had time to glimpse a towering mane before she allowed the darkness to pull her consciousness away.

**. . . **. . . **. . . **

She woke alone this time, feeling a bit more clean physically but with the sickening sensation that knowledge of her new fate was bringing her. Her previous captors had never touched her with the intent to use her sexually, though they had groped her to humiliate her many times, and now the idea of being used as an unwilling whore for three Saiyans—

Choking on tears and curling up on herself, she ignored the pain in her limbs and the lack of restraints and gasped for breath at the memory of seeing Frieza. That he existed—that was impossible, wasn't it? And now Vegeta, he wanted her to—but he was alive as well, and this really, really couldn't be happening, could it? Warm fur tickled her nose and she brushed it away, not registering at first the black tail waving in front of her eyes. But when she felt the action in the base of her spine, she focused her gaze in on the flagging limb and felt her blood run cold.

"What the hell?" she gasped out, hearing her voice rasp in her throat from disuse and abuse. The memory of acrid smoke was faint, as was the searing agony of hot embers landing on this same tail, and she clapped a hand over her mouth in an effort to hold back her hysterical scream. _I have a tail. I have a _tail_. I'm a Saiyan now? But that's not possible. I'm dreaming, I have to be, trying to think of anything that might be worse than where I was. Oh, God, please let me be dreaming._

She heard a noise at the door, and instinct told her how to wrap her tail around her waist, beneath the oversized shirt she wore. Only then did she notice how she was in different clothes, and went pale at the idea of a man changing her. Because there were only male Saiyans left, she knew, and there was absolutely no way any of them were going to let Frieza know that she, a female of their species, existed.

The door opened, and a towering bulk entered, crowned with the bald head of Nappa. She stared, he stared back, and when the equally tall form of Raditz and the much shorter body of Vegeta came in she found her eyes flickering between the three as potent fear coursed through her veins.

Vegeta walked forward to the foot of the bed on which she lay, and she froze at his proximity and hugged herself tighter. He held his hands up in a gesture of peace, but the action did nothing to calm her, and he sighed and crossed his arms. "Relax, woman. We are not going to hurt you, or touch you in…that way. I apologize for the fear I have caused you, but the ruse was necessary if I wished to keep you alive and in my protection."

She let herself focus on that last word, and echoed it back. "Protection? From—from him?"

There was no doubt who "him" was, and she watched as Vegeta nodded. "Yes. If he knew of your identity as a member of my people, you would be ruined and murdered within the hour."

"I think I'd rather you kill me yourself, before that happened." She saw the nauseous look on each of their faces at her words, and finally felt a little safer. "How did I get here?"

"We found you abandoned in the middle of a village on Corusa. As near as we can figure, someone left you to die while we were purging the other side of the planet. Do you remember anything of what happened? How did you even escape the destruction of our world?"

"I—" She swallowed, and then took a deep breath. "I don't know. I know its name, remember that much, but—I don't remember much before I became a prisoner of…I don't even know who he was. Or, God help me, why they even wanted to kidnap me in the first place. I was—I was nothing, and then…dirt."

"You are not dirt, or nothing," the male standing next to her bed growled suddenly, and she cringed back on instinct. Immediately he seemed to regret his tone, and stepped back to give her a bit more space. "What is your name?"

"Ko- Kokoro, sir."

"Hnn. I am Vegeta, Prince of the Saiyans, and these are Nappa and Raditz. If we are in the presence of anyone outside this company, you will address us with 'Master' or 'Sir,' understood?"

"Ye—Yes, Prince Vegeta." Her tail felt a little cramped, and she rubbed at it a little but kept it hidden. Seeing this, Vegeta nodded in approval.

"Keep that out of sight, or the fate I spoke of could soon be yours. In fact, you'll mostly be staying in this room for the indeterminable future, but it'd be good to keep up the habit of hiding it anyway. You absolutely _cannot _allow it to be seen. Nappa, options?"

The bald tower walked to one of the other beds and sat down, copied in this action by Raditz. "We can't keep her here long, Frieza will be expecting us to grow tired of her or kill her with our strength before too much time passes. Allowing her to heal gives us some leeway in finding a solution, but I doubt we'd have more than a week for that. Then two more weeks after, and I figure we'd be expected to have lost control and have killed her by then."

"We need a planet," Raditz chimed in, "one which can support her but allow her to avoid discovery. She would be there for a long time, though, however long it takes us to finally get rid of Frieza."

"Then begin the search, but do it discreetly. The others will question why we want an uninhabited world, and we cannot afford that," Vegeta answered. Kokoro wasn't sure if she preferred being spoken to directly or being spoken about as if she weren't there, but kept quiet in hopes they would continue to ignore her. Next, though, Vegeta came closer and held out a hand. "Let me see your palm," he ordered, and she stiffened. Disobedience was a bad plan, she figured, and began to lift her right hand, but then paused when she realized he must want to see the cut on her left hand and offered that to him.

He grunted and took a firm grasp of her wrist, holding her arm in place as he undid the bandages she only just noticed. The skin on her palm was marred by a pink scar, but whatever medicine they had in this universe clearly worked, and she was allowed her hand back without needing it rewrapped. But he made a beckoning motion next, and at her questioning look he sighed. "Your tail next. You had a burn on it from some debris on Corusa. I promise not to grip to immobilize and pain."

Because that could easily happen, she remembered, recalling moments in the manga and the anime where Goku discovered this downside of his tail. Hesitantly, she uncurled it, thinking it strange to have this extra limb, and allowed him to inspect the spot on her tail where another bandage had been unwrapped. He touched only with the tips of his fingers, the sensation strange in and of itself, but made no other move to come in contact with the sensitive appendage. She shoved down the tingles as she waited for his pronouncement, and at his nod she retracted her tail and wrapped it around her waist once more.

"Raditz will fetch you food," Vegeta told her next, though he didn't move away from the side of her bed. "After this, you will sleep."

She nodded, liking the sound of that. She had spent a long time unconscious, but already she felt bone weary and the oncoming weight of exhaustion on her eyes. And food, she could do with food. But she didn't remember the last time she ate, especially anything substantial, so she feared overdoing it and told the prince that.

"As expected. Raditz, make sure it is light fare. Soup and fruit, if you can get your hands on that."

Raditz nodded and left, and Kokoro followed his exit with her eyes. He would die soon, she realized, and suddenly she wanted to curl up and cry again. Vegeta seemed to recognize this, for he stiffened, made an aborted movement with a hand, and then turned and walked away. Assured for the moment that she would be safe in the presence of these men, she turned onto her side and lay staring at the wall. This was her reality now, and she regretted instantly any fanciful wish she might have made in her younger years to be here.

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_**Uploaded 4/7/14**_


	3. Chapter 3: World of Weakness

Thanks for the favorites and the watches, guys. I'm trying to add in more to the chapters in this first part, so things may appear and disappear or get edited. I'll let you know at the beginning of each chapter if I've messed with the previous ones, and which specific ones, and at the end of each chapter you'll see a line that says "updated -date-" or "edited -date-" that will let you know if it's been fiddled with recently.

As a note on how things are spelled, I decided to go with the Wiki and FF-dot-net spelling of "Frieza" rather than the spelling I was originally going to go with, "Freeza." Quick question, and it's something I'll need help with soon, is it "Bulma Brief" as the site shows or is it "Bulma Briefs" as I seem to remember it being said sometimes?

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**Chapter Three: World of Weakness**

Kokoro spent the next five days in that bed, getting up only to use the washroom, inevitably with someone hovering close at hand when they were around—and one usually was. Her three new companions seemed to panic every time she so much as stumbled, and had she not been so distraught over being in what used to be a fictional world among a crew of planet-killers, she might have thought it amusing. The hierarchy was quickly established, with Vegeta reigning supreme in their shared quarters but remaining very much aloof, never snapping at her but determinedly keeping his distance. Nappa was the one who took care of her the most, and she struggled every time to reconcile this image of him with the one built up in her head by his enthusiastic destruction of that Earth city and his equally vicious murder of Tien. Raditz didn't hang around her much, getting her food but not having much more a part in her life than his silent presence. He often argued with Nappa, until Vegeta inevitably silenced the both of them, and the resulting brooding silence was what she would fall asleep to, preferring to deal with her nightmares rather than short tempers of the Saiyan males.

She knew she bothered them with her nightmares, could see the confused mixture of frustration at their helplessness, weariness from their interrupted sleep, annoyance at her weakness, and territorial anger at whoever had caused her this lasting pain. She supposed they did consider her as theirs, whether she was a slave or not, and wondered in her more clear-minded moments what role they assigned her in their minds. She thought of alpha males and wondered if, as the only female, this automatically made her Vegeta's mate, of sorts, and felt a quiver of irrational fear at the thought. He had promised not to touch her, had promised they wouldn't touch her, but after he killed Frieza and was free to reclaim his life? Would he claim her, regardless of how she felt about the matter? The topic went undiscussed, however, unspoken even in the quiet hours of the night when she lay awake in the echoes of her darkest fears and memories.

Frieza featured prominently in a good portion of her nightmares. It was strange; she hadn't ever thought she could fear anyone more than her captors, who had such a tenacious desire for vengeance against her for what she had done inadvertently to get in their way. She did remember, despite what she told Vegeta, but how was she to inform him that she was human last she knew, and he was just a character in a manga? But Frieza—his leer burned darkly in her mind when she closed her eyes, and his words froze her ears and sent her shaking. And his power—she could sense it, a malicious, flaming beacon amidst what might as well be dim sparks in comparison. Even untrained, she felt it day and night, a reminder of the danger so close at hand._ "Your new life, if you even live through this day, is at my whim,"_ he had said, and his point was very clear to her; Frieza hated the Saiyans, and one wrong move from them was sure to get her killed, never mind the idea of her new species being found out. The tail mystified her, worried her, and even though the others actively avoided touching it she feared her reaction should they do so, new as the sensations would be. She knew it could cause debilitating pain, but when Vegeta had examined her injury there had been nothing of that. Pain and pleasure—always there was this dichotomy in the body, no matter how willing or unwilling she was. And in thinking about that, she wondered if the others expected her to already know she was to run to Vegeta's arms when the time came.

The remainder of her bad dreams featured her kidnappers, but her nightmares were about Vegeta, too, sometimes—his words in the throne room fueled these, regardless of his behavior afterwards. She didn't trust him, had not seen the fulfillment of the Namek Arc and where his reluctant alliance with Gohan, Krillin, and Goku led him; she hadn't even seen Goku's arrival, actually. That future, if she didn't mess things up between now and then, would determine whether or not she could even begin to trust him. She was decided in this resolve: if he continued to purge planets, continued to welcome the thrill of killing, rather than just fighting, she would run, run as far and as fast as she could. And if he caught her, would not take no for an answer, she was broken enough to kill herself and end it all.

Nappa pushed a spoonful of soup at her. "Eat up, kid, you need the nutrients and I know you hate the shots."

They had been giving her injections ever since she first woke up in their room, and her terror of them was more than her terror of needles at the moment so she didn't resist, and learned that as of yet she needn't fear sedatives or other drugs. But they knew, knew how much she hated them, and Nappa's warning made that clear. "Can't I just eat the soup and go without the shots?" she griped, annoyed enough to ignore her wariness at his proximity. She wondered if she had a phobia of men in general, and wouldn't be surprised if a psychiatrist announced this very diagnosis.

"Nope. You've been too long without proper nutrients and as a Saiyan you have a much higher metabolism. You're eating more, yes, but you have a lot to make up for."

Kokoro made a face. "Isn't there anything I can swallow?"

"Nope."

"Splendid." She let her expression twist in distaste, and then blinked at her next thought. "Can— Can I try giving myself the next one? I don't like the thought of sticking a needle into myself, but if I had some level of control in the process, then maybe…"

Nappa ruffled her hair before she could thwart his gigantic hand and shoved the bowl at her. "Eat that on your own without spilling things, and I'll consider it."

Oh, yes, the reason why he was still feeding her himself—her hands always shook, and often spilled more soup than she managed to get into her mouth. Sighing, Kokoro nodded her agreement to the decision. Brushing her hair out of her face, she picked up the spoon and scowled at the trembling limb.

Her hair had changed, she had noticed the first time she looked in the mirror, and even before then when she first touched it in a moment alone. It was fuller, thicker, and seemed to float sometimes due to that thickness, but it was amazingly soft somehow. She had thought it would be like stiff wires with how it held itself, but sometimes she compared it to a kitten's fur and smiled in amusement at her own whimsy. It stayed back well enough on its own, but sometimes pieces of it did fall in her face, though she only really cared about that when she was eating.

Nappa stood back as she struggled to feed herself, and looked pained at the sight. "How long did you go without proper feeding?"

She paused, spoon halfway to her mouth, and watched as the broth spilled back into the bowl. "A while," she answered in a flat tone, not wanting to remember, and went back to eating.

Vegeta returned from training with Raditz, and scowled at her struggles. "Nappa, help her."

"She wants to try giving herself the injection. I told her if she ate that on her own without spilling it, I'd think about it."

"Absolutely not. I won't have her injuring herself in her grasping at independence. When she's safe on a world far out of Frieza's reach, fine, but for now we need to help her work towards surviving on her own, and wasting food is not going to help that."

Kokoro didn't bother reminding him that she was right there, content enough to be ignored for now. She cursed under her breath as her next spoonful fell back into the bowl. Something caught in her throat, and she bit hard on her lower lip to hold it back, recognizing her own tears of frustration. She had managed well enough before she escaped, but she hadn't been able afford wasting one scrap of gruel, and they didn't feed her a liquid like this was. Bread was so much easier to hold on to.

Her eyes lit up at the thought, and she turned to a wavering Nappa. "Is it possible to have bread as well? If not this time, because I doubt Raditz would be allowed back in the cafeteria right now, but next time?"

Nappa huffed under his breath and grabbed the bowl from her. "Next time, fine. I think you're ready to have something more substantial, and you're keeping the fruit down all right."

Kokoro beamed at him, and Vegeta growled. When she stiffened, expression going blank, he sighed and moved away, and she forced herself to relax. Nappa held out a spoonful with a rueful chuckle, and she took in the bite with a sullen grunt. "You don't trust us much, do you?"

"No." The word was out before she could even consider lying, and kept her eyes down to avoid their pitying looks.

Nappa didn't hesitate long, and sighed. "Don't really blame you. But you have our words, we'll protect you even from ourselves."

In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought the saying went, and shook her head. "Still don't trust you."

Instead of replying to that, Nappa held up yet another spoonful. "Eat up," he instructed, and she figured that was the best reaction she could hope for.

**. . .** . . .** . . .**

_ "Hey, Koko, what are you doing out here?" The tall redhead settled down next to her, and Kokoro leaned against her brother's shoulder. _

"_It's stifling in there," she answered, voice low. She knew what he was seeing: shadowed eyes, flat and dead, with tears hovering right at the edge. Her hair, soft and black, hung long down her back, and she fingered the limp strands with a strange sense of loss. Why should she already miss her hair when she hadn't cut it yet?_

"_It's called a safe house for a reason, Koko, and you know Shiroi won't like that you're out here alone."_

_Kokoro flopped back in the cold grass and stared up at the craters of the full moon. "I feel caged and I don't know why."_

"_It's not like you've been out of those guys' clutches very long, you know, of course you still feel caged. You're not free yet."_

_Her brow furrowed. This conversation was strange… She had been kidnapped, yes, but not until after her family was put in a safe house. This comment was out of place—was she dreaming, instead of revisiting a memory? Of course she was, remembering things that hadn't happened yet should have been her first clue. _

_Kokoro's brother stood up and brushed grass and dirt from his trousers. "You know, you're putting us all in danger just by sitting out here." For a moment, his face flashed to her kidnapper's and her breath caught. "Come on, before you kill me again."_

_A gunshot exploded, and she lurched forward to catch her brother as he fell. "Yuu!" she screamed, fingers clenching in his shirt. "Yuu, talk to me!"_

_His lips split in a bloody grin, and Frieza's voice emerged. "You kill everyone you care about, don't you? You can't do anything right!"_

_She resisted the urge to throw the body away from her, and instead flung the smoking pistol in her hands as far as she could. It fell into the darkness, clattering against concrete which shouldn't actually be there. From her arms, her brother blinked up at her. "Why, Kokoro?"_

_It was his own voice this time, and she sobbed. "Because I couldn't do anything else. Because I couldn't save you any other way. I'm sorry, Yuudai. I'm so, so sorry."_

_A foot slammed into her side, breaking her grasp on her older sibling and knocking the air out of her lungs. She was sent rolling, and curled up around her kidneys in a feeble attempt to protect them. Her eyes found pink clawed feet, and she followed the form up and up to a nasty leer, short stature belying the enormous power within. Frieza stood next to her captor, and they laughed at her. "Useless b—," they jeered. "Can't even break right. There's no escape, you know. You'll never get away. Your life is ours."_

"_No!" she shouted at them, ducking her head lower. "I'll die first!"_

"_So do it," the human beside Frieza scoffed. "There's really nothing stopping you. Everyone you had left is dead now, because of you."_

_Frieza lit a ball of ki at his fingertips. "I'll make it easy on you, monkey. After all, why should you get any choice in the matter?" The purple light cast his face in sharp shadows and enhanced the grazed, evil grin, and she shuddered at the image of malice and glee. Calmly, without care, he raised his hand to point at Kokoro. "It's all on my whim."_

_ Pain exploded everywhere, and she screamed long and loud._

**. . . **. . . **. . .**

Kokoro came awake to a hand shaking her shoulder, and with a cry she moved to knock the limb away. It jerked back, then returned to clap itself over her mouth. "Be silent!" Vegeta's voice hissed, and she curled up instinctively and went still, waiting.

Vegeta backed off, and she stared up at him in the dim glow of the light they had left on in the washroom for her. "What was it this time?" he demanded, and she scowled.

"My own head telling me how weak I am, so don't you dare start," she snapped back, her tiredness loosening her guarded tongue.

"Annoying female. Don't put words in my mouth. You're not…completely weak," he muttered back, his voice probably not meant to be heard, and she eyed him warily. She wondered how much of that statement was just to get on her good side.

"I don't have the strength to even protect myself from a hamster, and I'm shattered," she admitted, feeling her tail wrap more closely about her in her anxiety. "And I can't even begin to heal until I'm free, I think. If I'll ever heal."

"None of us are exactly whole," he reminded her, though in his point of view he was probably just informing her of this fact. But she knew the darkness, knew that he had his own pain, and turned her head away from his gaze.

"I know," she said, and rolled away from him. She cringed at giving him her back, but neither was she going to face him right now, and appear to welcome comfort from him.

She heard him sigh and stiffened when she felt his weight push down the mattress. "I need you to trust me."

"I can't." She pulled the blanket tighter. "And I don't think I will be able to for some time, yet."

"Will your freedom help you?"

Kokoro considered that and peered up at him with a frown. "Maybe. Send me somewhere I can live—not just survive—and maybe I can remember what normality kind of feels like."

He didn't try to touch her, to her relief, and stood up. "We'll see what we can do. But I may not be able to offer much."

"I think at this point I'll take what I can get."

Vegeta only nodded, then turned to go. "Get some sleep," he ordered. "You get your bread tomorrow."

Weary and seeing no point in defying that order, Kokoro closed her eyes. Even so, the wait for that sleep to return was agonizing, and as she lay in the darkness she knew she wouldn't be sleeping well.

**. . .** . . .** . . .**

Morning came with a bowl of mashed…something, which was probably supposed to resemble oatmeal or grits. It was bland on her tongue after the soup, but she swallowed without complaint, knowing she wasn't about to get anything better. This wasn't a pleasure cruise, and neither a slave nor a Saiyan would get any special treatment here.

That thought hit her hard when she got a chance to get a shower. Able to stand up on her own for longer periods now without getting wiped out, she had asked to be able to clean herself properly, to which Vegeta had grudgingly acquiesced. She was not to overwork herself, because the Saiyans knew she would never allow any of them in there with her when she was naked. But mulling over her fate under the hot cascade, she very suddenly found herself needing to sit down.

She slid down the shower stall's slick wall as her knees buckled, sucking in air greedily. The warm, moist air wasn't helping matters much, and with a trembling hand she managed to crack open the door a little to let in cool relief.

Kokoro's head bumped up against the wall with an exhausted relaxation of muscles. Her eyes were burning, thin trails leaking from the corners to be lost in the streams pouring down from her hair. It was still hard to breathe, but a moment's thought caused her to recognized that she was choking on her tears. She wasn't sure which emotion had led to this… Helplessness? Humiliation? Grief, terror, emptiness? That wide open sensation of feeling so utterly lost? She had always been a victim, weak, her captors' little toy. Never had she been outright called a slave. And now, here she was. Vegeta had claimed her as such, Frieza had named her so. She had no name in that creature's eyes, only the title of slave. Vegeta didn't even call her by name… What was she to him, then, a tool or one of his people? But even that didn't have much bearing on things, she knew, given his casual disregard of both Raditz and Nappa in the future for their weakness. But she feared death far less than whatever else he could do to her, she realized, regardless of his promises.

She almost wished she was back where she had been, in her own world. At least she knew those monsters, knew what they would do, knew that there was some possibility of standing against them. There wasn't even a way to kill herself here, the Saiyans kept so close an eye on her it was almost maddening. Though, here—she was alone now. It would be so easy find a way to drown herself with no one watching. But would even that last long, before they brought her back?

A pounding on the door answered that question for her. "Hurry up in there!" the surly prince demanded through the steel barricade. "Don't make me come in there and drag you back to your bed."

Kokoro cleared her throat to free it of any blockage. "Okay!" she called back, reaching for the edge of the stall door to pull it shut again. "I'll be done in a few minutes."

"You'd _better_," came the growled reply, and she shivered in foreboding at the promise in those words. He really would drag her out to make sure she was properly resting, if only because she was his property and she wasn't following orders. No, there would be no escaping these men, not unless—unless she could get home? Not home, she corrected, but Earth. Raditz would be going in search of his brother at some point; all she had to do was wait for him to remember the supposed Third Class sibling and tag along somehow.

And there was motivation, burning through her and startling her lungs with a gasp as she stood upright again. There was something to live for.

With renewed purpose, Kokoro shut off the water and opened the stall to grab a towel. She needed baby steps, she recognized. And first of them was to feed herself, and Vegeta had promised her bread. One step at a time, until she learned to fly.

* * *

_**Updated 4-10-14**_


End file.
